Microsoft has vowed that it would never let Amazon be less expensive and would match every price cut with one of its own. Google, with its own massively huge data centers, is also willing and able to play the price-cutting game.

Frugality: We try not to spend money on things that don't matter to customers. Frugality breeds resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for headcount, budget size, or fixed expense.

"If you're flying everyone Business and First Class to meet customers, it's a pretty substantial expense, and none of that benefits customers," Jassy said to CRN Australia.

When it comes to the cloud, Amazon has gotten creative in order to be frugal. For instance, computer storage disks have notoriously high failure rates, so vendors have to cover refunds on faulty disks. But Amazon has reportedly gotten cheaper prices on disks by promising never to return one, CRN reports.

The company also saves on hardware by designing and building things like computer servers and network routers itself. That way, it never pays for product features it doesn't need.

For instance, instead of buying networking equipment from a company like Cisco, "We also built our own networking hardware, and have our own protocol stack, and the price point has changed phenomenally," James Hamilton, senior VP and distinguished engineer said at a recent AWS event.